Tuesday, May 03, 2005

This and that ...

Posted by
Abi

Via the excellent kitabkhana : Ram Guha's article in the Telegraph, in which he draws (once again) a moral equivalent between the left and the right. A while ago, he tried this stupid stunt -- and it is a stupid stunt, because he claims to be left of center -- when he called the noted activist Arundhati Roy the Arun Shourie of the left! After all the hard-hitting flak he received for that barb, including a serious dressing down by Ms. Roy herself, I thought he would refrain from such sound bites. Well, I guess I am wrong. See also Anand's post for another example of Ram's left-baiting.

I am a hardcore capitalist, and I have never understood why anyone could be so blinded by Communist ideal, and yet, I understand idealism and how consuming it can be. Idealism is a trait one picks up in early years, and holds on to. Because the only truth worth its salt is the one ridden with ambiguity.

Ravikiran Rao and Gargi describe two different ways in which the world will end. On the other hand, S.K. has a different catastrophe in mind: the declining sex ratio in India. Apparently, it has already started wreaking havoc in the Tamil Brahmin (Tam-Bram, as he calls it) community :

When the eminently eligible one seeks a suitable girl, using the algorithm of horoscopes (horror-scopes to many!), through matrimony dot coms, swayamvaras as well as the old faithful- newspaper classifieds, their parents find the tables squarely turned! Yes, it is no longer the boys’ hegemony. “Brides wanted” outnumber the “Bridegrooms wanted” by 3 to 2. The girls’ photographs are hard-to-get commodity (you need a password to steal a look at the nubile young things). The fairer sex has turned finicky and fastidious, thanks to the BPO’s and consequent financial emancipation. And the pre-requisite for an alliance is an upfront assurance on the girl’s career ambitions and premarital fiscal commitments.

Apropos of nothing, let me just end this post with a nice little gem that I found via Evelyn Rodrguez :

Always we hope someone else has the answer.
Some other place will be better,
some other time it will all turn out.

This is it.
No one else has the answer.
No other place will be better,
and it has already turned out. -- Lao Tzu.